


Were It Not For Everything

by Aiyestel



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen, Mages, Psychological Trauma, Templar - Freeform, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-16
Updated: 2011-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-27 10:25:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aiyestel/pseuds/Aiyestel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some nights a person lies awake and thinks of what they might have been had they walked a different path. Cullen is such a man. His time as a templar has changed him and broken him, making him a man so very unlike the one he used to be; like the man he thought he would be.</p><p>Note: These are not my feelings on mages. This is simply me and Cullen pondering things, late at night, and me typing them out even though I probably shouldn’t. Just a drabble. Not much to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Were It Not For Everything

It was nights like this he thought he could almost let go.

When the winter wind caused snowflakes to go off course and drift through the open window to his room in the Templar barracks he could unfurl the claws around his heart just a touch. When he laid in bed wide awake staring up at the stone ceiling he allowed himself to think of all he had lost and all he had sacrificed. When he heard the night watchman call “All is well!” he found himself laughing bitterly to himself because all was not well; not here in this city of despair and certainly not within his heart.

Those were the nights he could let down his guard just enough to ponder the loss of the man he might have become had it not been for the life behind him.

What might he have been had he not been a Templar? Sometimes he imagined himself as a farmer, a man of the earth. With dirt under his nails and sweat on his brow he coaxed the ground into yielding a bounty that his young children marveled at, that his wife used to fill their table. Life wasn’t always easy but it was simple work; honest work. His days were spent working the fields, his nights spent soothing young ones back to sleep with a soft tune or when all was still, making love to the woman that held his heart.

Or maybe he would have been a wanderer. He would live off the land and travel wherever the wind blew him. He would have worked odd jobs in exchange for a hot meal or a few copper bits. Some nights he could afford a room at the inn, other nights he fell asleep beneath the stars. Either way he was happy. All of the things he had seen and people he had met added another story to be told when he shared a fire with fellow travelers.

Elthina had told him that the man he had become would have been the same no matter the journey to this moment, for that was the Maker’s will. She meant it to be comforting; a balm on a world-weary soul, but it was hardly that for him. So many things had shaped him, terrible things, unimaginable cruelties dreamt of by minds darker than the depths of the Dwarven roads.

Then there were nights so unlike this one when the screams of the souls lost at Kinloch Hold still tore at him. The cries of his brothers and sisters were as fresh now as they were then, when the mages had rebelled and unleashed monsters and demons more terrifying than those that had haunted a man’s darkest nightmares. He had been naïve then, thinking mages were people just like him. People with an ability that set them apart, that could consume them if they weren’t careful. He had been there to watch over them, to keep them from coming to harm. Now he knew it had been stupid to think one man could make any sort of difference.

 _Maker, though the darkness comes upon me I shall embrace the light. I shall weather the storm. I shall endure. What you have created, no one can tear asunder._ He had heard that line a thousand times, spoke that line a thousand times, but still he wondered if maybe the Maker had forgotten the limitations of a mortal soul. He was proof how easily the faithful could be ripped apart.

Now he clenched his jaw to keep from flinching when a mage used their magic around him even when he was expecting it. His knuckles turned white as his hand clenched around the hilt of his blade, ready to act should there be the slightest sign to dictate the need. That constant fear was like a hot iron branding his brain. It seared away any good memories that might have been made to leave only the scars exposed beneath.

 _They are dangerous._ His mind snarled. _You have seen what they can do. What they have done._

He could not trust them. Not now. Even though these mages hadn’t wronged him personally their kind were responsible for the man he had become.

Still his mind wouldn’t settle. Somewhere deep within there was a thread of the man he had been once. The young templar who saw the mages as people who shared his capacity to live and love; to know great joy and the sense of loss that accompanied sacrifice. Whether this piece of him had never been broken or had somehow repaired itself in spite of the fresh horrors that haunted every new day in Kirkwall, he couldn’t say. The pain didn’t go away but he grew used to it and that familiarity helped dull the edge.

It was that man that whispered to him that the Knight Commander was pressing too hard. It was that man that knew no good could come of such tyranny.

So on some nights when the cold wrestled away the feeling in his toes and fingers and when the snow piled on his windowsill it was that man who helped him let go. And in those moments he could think of the person he might have been were it not for everything.


End file.
